The 135-acre Raymond Farm covers so much open land on Pidcock Creek Road in Solebury Township that it seems a small plane could land on a field that runs down to Covered Bridge Road.
"This land is contiguous with another 100-acre farm that's preserved through our program," Barbara Drew, land preservation director for Solebury, said as she stood on the edge of the field.
Farther up Pidcock Creek, she said, "we've preserved another 123 acres. So we have a nice corridor, a significant corridor."
Efforts in Solebury since 1996 have secured about 26 percent of the township's total acres, making it among the most active conservators of open space in the county.
But county money for such efforts is drying up.
"The interest in preservation hasn't died" in Bucks, said Jeffrey L. Marshall, spokesman for the Heritage Conservancy, a private nonprofit in Doylestown Township. "Whether the funding will still be there for it" from voters, "I can't tell you."
Land conservation in Bucks, he said, "has certainly been on the upswing" since a $59 million county bond issue in 1997.
But, Marshall said, "the majority of that money has been spent," much of it shared with local preservation programs such as Solebury's.
So is there a need for a new county bond issue?
"Certainly," said Kent A. Baird, coordinator of the open-space preservation program for the Bucks County Planning Commission since January 2001. Baird announced his retirement in May, pending completion of a few projects.
"Some might say the momentum is dying" for the county effort, Baird said. But "to say that the same energy should be there as it was in 1997" might overlook all that has happened.
The $59 million in county money, he said, has attracted nearly $150 million from other sources.
Because of that $59 million, "22 municipalities - boroughs and townships - have actively pursued their own dedicated open space funding" through local bonds or taxes.
At Natural Lands Trust, a regional nonprofit conservation agency that holds easements on 968 acres in Solebury, Bucks is considered singular.
"The number and percentage of townships that have decided to raise their own money," said president Philip Wallis, makes Bucks "far and away the leading county in the state."
But Solebury wonders how much more it will be able to do without matching dollars from the county.
"We currently have projects that are feeling the county crunch," Drew said. "We can tell that the funds are running dry."
Solebury has spent only $2 million from its 2002 land preservation bond issue of $12 million.
But a significant amount of the remaining $10 million, she said, "is committed."
Among the acquisitions will be the Pidcock Creek Road farm, she said, whose development rights the owner has agreed to sell to the township so that the land can never be sold to a builder.
"We've got 25 projects pending," Drew said. "If we were successful with everything, we could spend more than the $12 million" that Solebury voters approved in 2002.
Bedminster and Solebury have been among the most successful towns in preserving land, according to Baird, of the county Planning Commission.
As he's leaving his job, Baird said he would recommend another county land preservation bond issue.
But, he cautioned, "if a community has voted for a pretty big bond" of its own, "they might not go for a gigantic bond for the county."
This article appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 2,2004.
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